Fic: Vers: VI: Crowsflight
Parts: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII
- - -
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
- E. E. Cummings
- - -
VI
Crowsflight
I see Clark again, but only in the days. I stay late at night at the Daily Planet, but he no longer stays with me.
We hardly speak in the day, and I stay late at night, and I think that I will never be friends with Clark again. We pushed out in a little boat onto open water; and I had thought I could turn it around, and sail us back into harbour, and find everything I left unchanged. But I couldn't. Things are different between us now; things will always be different.
And I don't know what to do with the broken wing of my heart.
I sit alone in the dark, listening to the police scanner like a concerned wife; like a widow in the middle of the last century might have sat alone and listened to the radio. I wonder if Clark still goes out night after night; if he has buried his corpse in his work. No. I can't bear that thought. I won't have that dream again; I won't have Clark digging his own grave over me.
I get up with the next whispering over the wire, and pick up my coat.
I never once stopped to consider that I was doing the very thing which frightens me so much about Clark.
But it wasn't recklessness which brought me here, because I don't even make it to the site of the call. Three blocks away I feel myself shoved from behind, and I realise in a sudden as my face hits the wall that I am being mugged.
(This always happens at the worst moment.)
I snatch my purse back from the man, and we struggle up against the wall for a minute - but even I would have let him take my things, if I had known that he had a gun. But before I realise, it explodes against my side, cracking the cage of my ribs, and I fall back.
He's gone even before I realise I am shot, sliding down the wall with the sticky blackness of my own blood all over my hands.
Then Clark is here out of nowhere, enveloping me in the vastness of his ocean; drowning me in his sea. His arms grow around me like branches and his hands stem the spilling of my guts. I close my eyes against him and breathe him in. It doesn't hurt.
- - -
I wake in the hospital, not alone for once.
Clark is there: for the first time he looks exhausted; he looks like the ocean flowed out of him and left him dried up on the shore. But it was me an ocean flowed out of. My head feels like it is filled up from the inside with arsenic, with ache. I look at him, and he looks at me, and I try to smile at him but he doesn't smile back.
"You nearly didn't make it," he says, with unrelenting honesty - but his hands are clenched white and tight like his jaw. "You nearly died."
I think he was more tender to me in my sleep. Hands warmed my fingers, and fingers brushed hair out of my eyes.
"My mom came down to see you," he says. "She's at home now, sleeping." His voice trembles. "You really frightened - her."
I think of Martha, then, sat by my bedside and thinking that she has lost too many of the people she loved. I think of her alone at the Kent farm, where her husband took his last breath, where she said goodbye to her son, where she scratched memories deep into the rock and the caves and watered the seeds of them with her grief, and fatigue, and her happiness.
When I look back at Clark, he is watching me with some strange expression. Then he leans forward, and wipes the tear from my cheek with his thumb, as if - it's OK. Then he stands back and bites back on his jaw. "Sorry," he says. I press my lips together.
"Thankyou," I say, and my voice sounds choked. "Thankyou for - for coming to my rescue. I don't know how you - but you did."
He looks down and nods, then turns to leave. He stops at the door for a moment before opening it; for more than a moment.
"What would I have done," eventually he says softly to the air, "if you'd died?"
Then he leaves.
- - -
I leave a week later. (Clark got better more quickly.)
I throw my overnight bag down on the sofa and sit beside it. I almost had a thought there in the hospital which would have closed my throat and filled my eyes; I stopped myself in time. But I am alone now, and free to think anything, and inside my ribs is all dank and cold. I wrap my arms around myself. The hole in my side aches. And I think, if things keep up this way with Clark, I might have to leave. Because I can't bear this.
I have never felt so alone in my life.
I curl up on the sofa on my side and lie still. My face is so heavy I think it will fall off, and slide onto the floor. And then what would become of me? I would have become the one thing I was most afraid of being: anonymous.
There is a soft knock at the door, but I lie there for a minute. On the second knock I sit up, and call out, "It's open."
It's Clark. He closes the door behind himself carefully, and then stares at me from across the room. "I went to pick you up at the hospital," he says; "but they told me you had already left. I thought -" he looks away.
"I came to see how you were," he says eventually.
"I'm fine," I say, and it comes out more abrupt than I meant.
His eyes linger over my hand on my side, and I feel like he is peeling the layers of my skin. He nods after a moment, to himself, and says, "I wanted to talk to you too, Lois."
He walks into the apartment, and sits on the sofa next to me. "I don't want to fight," he says, and I smile at him: no promises. He sits there, looking down into his hands, for several protracted minutes, pressing his lips together and breathing in apprehensively. "I should apologise for kissing you," he says eventually. "But I'm not going to."
He glances sidelong at me, and I frown.
"I know I should," he says, "but I can't. Because, Lois, I needed to tell you - I needed you to know something. It was important that you knew. But I couldn't say it." He looks away again, across time and oceans, "I shouldn't say it."
I think the hole in my side has burst at the seams; I can't breathe. I press my eyelids together. "I can't do this," I say. I stand up. "I can't do this." My hand is shaking, but I point at him anyway. It is a command: I can't do this. He stands up and faces me.
"I don't want to fight," he says: an order to match my command.
"What, then?" I say, and I shout like I'm speaking into the wind; like I am the wind. "What is it that's so important that I know? What could you possibly have to tell me, Clark?"
He looks me directly in the eye. "That I love you," he says. I feel my sails slacken. "I love you," he says again, "and I probably shouldn't, but I can't not. I love you because - you don't want me to; because you push, and you push, and you don't want anybody to love you because you think there's nothing there to love and because you're wrong."
I almost fall then, and that would have cost me my self-respect. I almost fall like one of those swooning damsels, but I don't. I step back instead, but I don't say anything.
"You're speechless," he says, with a humourless smile. "That's never good."
I close my eyes, as if I can stop time, as if by closing my eyes I can keep things like this and decide. There is a bird in the tree in the cage of my ribs, beating her wings hard against my rib cage; and the tree would crack open the cage, and the bird of my heart would fly away, wing beat on wing beat. There is a bird in the tree and she is singing into the wind. Clark is still there.
I put my hand on his shoulder then, and lean up, pressing my mouth to his. He bends into me, and I push myself up into him, my fingers in his hair, my hand on his chest. He tastes like apples, and corn, and coffee, and Clark. He kisses my neck, and I dig my fingernails into him, and scratch memories into his dirt, and he is pulling me up, and up: he is mine, he is mine, and oh god - "I love you," I whisper against his ear. "I love you."
- - -
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
- E. E. Cummings
- - -
VI
Crowsflight
I see Clark again, but only in the days. I stay late at night at the Daily Planet, but he no longer stays with me.
We hardly speak in the day, and I stay late at night, and I think that I will never be friends with Clark again. We pushed out in a little boat onto open water; and I had thought I could turn it around, and sail us back into harbour, and find everything I left unchanged. But I couldn't. Things are different between us now; things will always be different.
And I don't know what to do with the broken wing of my heart.
I sit alone in the dark, listening to the police scanner like a concerned wife; like a widow in the middle of the last century might have sat alone and listened to the radio. I wonder if Clark still goes out night after night; if he has buried his corpse in his work. No. I can't bear that thought. I won't have that dream again; I won't have Clark digging his own grave over me.
I get up with the next whispering over the wire, and pick up my coat.
I never once stopped to consider that I was doing the very thing which frightens me so much about Clark.
But it wasn't recklessness which brought me here, because I don't even make it to the site of the call. Three blocks away I feel myself shoved from behind, and I realise in a sudden as my face hits the wall that I am being mugged.
(This always happens at the worst moment.)
I snatch my purse back from the man, and we struggle up against the wall for a minute - but even I would have let him take my things, if I had known that he had a gun. But before I realise, it explodes against my side, cracking the cage of my ribs, and I fall back.
He's gone even before I realise I am shot, sliding down the wall with the sticky blackness of my own blood all over my hands.
Then Clark is here out of nowhere, enveloping me in the vastness of his ocean; drowning me in his sea. His arms grow around me like branches and his hands stem the spilling of my guts. I close my eyes against him and breathe him in. It doesn't hurt.
- - -
I wake in the hospital, not alone for once.
Clark is there: for the first time he looks exhausted; he looks like the ocean flowed out of him and left him dried up on the shore. But it was me an ocean flowed out of. My head feels like it is filled up from the inside with arsenic, with ache. I look at him, and he looks at me, and I try to smile at him but he doesn't smile back.
"You nearly didn't make it," he says, with unrelenting honesty - but his hands are clenched white and tight like his jaw. "You nearly died."
I think he was more tender to me in my sleep. Hands warmed my fingers, and fingers brushed hair out of my eyes.
"My mom came down to see you," he says. "She's at home now, sleeping." His voice trembles. "You really frightened - her."
I think of Martha, then, sat by my bedside and thinking that she has lost too many of the people she loved. I think of her alone at the Kent farm, where her husband took his last breath, where she said goodbye to her son, where she scratched memories deep into the rock and the caves and watered the seeds of them with her grief, and fatigue, and her happiness.
When I look back at Clark, he is watching me with some strange expression. Then he leans forward, and wipes the tear from my cheek with his thumb, as if - it's OK. Then he stands back and bites back on his jaw. "Sorry," he says. I press my lips together.
"Thankyou," I say, and my voice sounds choked. "Thankyou for - for coming to my rescue. I don't know how you - but you did."
He looks down and nods, then turns to leave. He stops at the door for a moment before opening it; for more than a moment.
"What would I have done," eventually he says softly to the air, "if you'd died?"
Then he leaves.
- - -
I leave a week later. (Clark got better more quickly.)
I throw my overnight bag down on the sofa and sit beside it. I almost had a thought there in the hospital which would have closed my throat and filled my eyes; I stopped myself in time. But I am alone now, and free to think anything, and inside my ribs is all dank and cold. I wrap my arms around myself. The hole in my side aches. And I think, if things keep up this way with Clark, I might have to leave. Because I can't bear this.
I have never felt so alone in my life.
I curl up on the sofa on my side and lie still. My face is so heavy I think it will fall off, and slide onto the floor. And then what would become of me? I would have become the one thing I was most afraid of being: anonymous.
There is a soft knock at the door, but I lie there for a minute. On the second knock I sit up, and call out, "It's open."
It's Clark. He closes the door behind himself carefully, and then stares at me from across the room. "I went to pick you up at the hospital," he says; "but they told me you had already left. I thought -" he looks away.
"I came to see how you were," he says eventually.
"I'm fine," I say, and it comes out more abrupt than I meant.
His eyes linger over my hand on my side, and I feel like he is peeling the layers of my skin. He nods after a moment, to himself, and says, "I wanted to talk to you too, Lois."
He walks into the apartment, and sits on the sofa next to me. "I don't want to fight," he says, and I smile at him: no promises. He sits there, looking down into his hands, for several protracted minutes, pressing his lips together and breathing in apprehensively. "I should apologise for kissing you," he says eventually. "But I'm not going to."
He glances sidelong at me, and I frown.
"I know I should," he says, "but I can't. Because, Lois, I needed to tell you - I needed you to know something. It was important that you knew. But I couldn't say it." He looks away again, across time and oceans, "I shouldn't say it."
I think the hole in my side has burst at the seams; I can't breathe. I press my eyelids together. "I can't do this," I say. I stand up. "I can't do this." My hand is shaking, but I point at him anyway. It is a command: I can't do this. He stands up and faces me.
"I don't want to fight," he says: an order to match my command.
"What, then?" I say, and I shout like I'm speaking into the wind; like I am the wind. "What is it that's so important that I know? What could you possibly have to tell me, Clark?"
He looks me directly in the eye. "That I love you," he says. I feel my sails slacken. "I love you," he says again, "and I probably shouldn't, but I can't not. I love you because - you don't want me to; because you push, and you push, and you don't want anybody to love you because you think there's nothing there to love and because you're wrong."
I almost fall then, and that would have cost me my self-respect. I almost fall like one of those swooning damsels, but I don't. I step back instead, but I don't say anything.
"You're speechless," he says, with a humourless smile. "That's never good."
I close my eyes, as if I can stop time, as if by closing my eyes I can keep things like this and decide. There is a bird in the tree in the cage of my ribs, beating her wings hard against my rib cage; and the tree would crack open the cage, and the bird of my heart would fly away, wing beat on wing beat. There is a bird in the tree and she is singing into the wind. Clark is still there.
I put my hand on his shoulder then, and lean up, pressing my mouth to his. He bends into me, and I push myself up into him, my fingers in his hair, my hand on his chest. He tastes like apples, and corn, and coffee, and Clark. He kisses my neck, and I dig my fingernails into him, and scratch memories into his dirt, and he is pulling me up, and up: he is mine, he is mine, and oh god - "I love you," I whisper against his ear. "I love you."